Etymologies

(American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Named by the astronomer Johannes Hevelius in 1687. From Latin canesvenatici (literally: "dogs of hunting") (Wiktionary)

Examples

He awoke one morning/noon/night to find the girl turning slowly black beside him, in the last embrace of a fungal toxin he would have reserved for the Emperor of Canes Venatici, or the worst criminal in human history.

The next considerable step towards a closer acquaintance with nebulae was made by Lord Rosse in 1845, when the prodigious light-grasp of his six-foot reflector afforded him the discovery of the great "Whirlpool" structure in Canes Venatici.

Among the more remarkable of these are the well-known nebula in Andromeda, and the great spiral in Canes Venatici; and, as a general rule, the emissions of all such nebulæ as present the appearance of star-clusters grown misty through excessive distance are of the same kind.

The first and most conspicuous specimen of this class was met with in April, 1845; it is situated in Canes Venatici, close to the tail of the Great Bear, and wore, in Sir J. Herschel's instruments, the aspect of a split ring encompassing a bright nucleus, thus presenting, as he supposed, a complete analogue to the system of the Milky Way.